Summary

One of the world's great architects, Frank O. Gehry has produced an astonishing body of work over the past forty years. This pioneering designer continues to receive worldwide praise from both peers and critics as the most talented and influential architect working today. With the artistry of a sculptor and the brilliant articulation of an engineer, Gehry creates complex yet sensual buildings that are lyrical constructions defying categorization. Assembled by Francesco Dal Co and Kurt Forster, two of architecture's most important writers and historians, in collaboration with Gehry, this comprehensive, critical documentation -- the first major monograph ever published -- surveys his visionary architecture, from his early houses to his powerful recent works. Bursting onto the scene in Southern California in the early 1960s, Gehry's revolutionary remodeling of his own house in 1978 -- the transformation of a suburban Dutch colonial into an architectural collage juxtaposing chain-link fence, plywood, exposed joists, and corrugated iron -- brought him international notoriety. His most important building to date, the recently completed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain -- nearly twice the size of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris -- is a monumental 256,000-square-foot curvilinear masterpiece made of shimmering titanium, glass, and Spanish limestone. This eagerly awaited and unprecedented publication -- with over three hundred projects and a thousand illustrations -- includes, among others, the controversial American Center in Paris; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Nationale-Nedelanden Building (Fred and Ginger Building) in Prague; Vitra Headquarters in Weil am Rhein, Germany; California Aerospace Museum; Loyola Law School in Los Angeles; Chiat Day Mojo Building in Venice, California; and Boston Children's Museum. Also shown are his provocative designs for houses -- many of them in California -- as well as his installations, exhibitions, and ingenious corrugated cardboard furniture. Also presented is Gehry's largest U.S. commission to date, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a cultural landmark and civic monument for his hometown of Los Angeles, which promises to change the concept of "public space" for generations to come.

Choice Review

For some time, Gehry's architecture has astonished and exasperated architectural critics, but it is his bizarre concrete-steel-limestone-titanium-and-glass Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1997) that has brought his eccentric fantasies to the attention of a broader public. The short, critical essays in this book, one by the noted architectural historian Kurt Forster and the other by Italian architectural critic Francesco dal Co, will not help the reader understand the complex of ideas that lies behind Gehry's work; but Hadley Arnold's 517-page catalog that traces Gehry's work from his senior thesis project at the University of California (1954) to his One Times Square proposal (1997) is an architectural historian's delight, with hundreds of plans and color illustrations of models, projects, and completed works. There is also a "Project Register" that provides a year-by-year synopsis of Gehry's work, a biography that includes Gehry's awards and prizes, and a 21-page bibliography. This book is the perfect introduction to Gehry's work, and it will be an essential purchase for all libraries that support either an undergraduate or graduate program in architecture. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. E. Van Schaack formerly, Colgate University

SD_ILS:1003478

9781885254634

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